Page 11 - Japanese Growth and Education: 演講人：Motohisa Kaneko教授

Japan’s Development and Education - Past, Present and Future -c111

In Figure 2, the horizontal axis stands for the level of estimated perc capita

GDP (in 1965 price and expressed logarithmic scale), and the vertical axis for
the share of public expenditure on primary and secondary education in GDP.
Each point in the space stands for the combination of the two indices for a

particular country at a particular time period, and the path connecting the points
stands for the historical path from this perspective. Estimates for Japan, the U.K.,
and the U.S. are presented.

The figure demonstrates first and foremost that Japan started investing
on basic education when it was at a very early stage of economic growth, as
represented by the low level of per capita GDP.
In 1870, Japan’s per capita GDP was still well below 1000 dollars, it spent

more than 1 percent of GDP on basic education. Even though economic growth
remained low until 1910, the share of educational expenditure went up to 2

percent. This compares with the cases of the UK and the US, whose expenditure
th
on basic education remained at around 1 percent even in the early 20 century,
when in both countries per capita GDP reached about 4000 dollars level.
This implies that Japan in Phase 1 spent unusually large resources on basic

education. While the national government lacked sufficient financial resources,
it succeeded in persuading the general public that providing basic education was

essential for individual achievement as well as national development. With the
backdrop of this ideology, local communities were held responsible to bear the
burden of establish and support primary schools based on local resources.
Through that policy the government succeeded in establishing a substantial

part of primary education, but it left economically backward area lagging
behind. As the modern economic growth started, the national government

started subsidizing economically backward regions to strengthen teacher
education and school facilities. Through these measures, primary education was